Abortion and crime rates

[myp]

What are your opinions on abortion and crime rate, especially if you are pro-life? This was a controversial topic discussed in the book Freakonomics and elsewhere as it suggests that legal abortion led to drastically reduced crime rates since many "unwanted" children were never born and didn't end up having poor lives that led to crime.

More from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_effect

Abortion is a topic I am not really decided on and never have been. Personally, I do not think I would be able to abort a child of my own, but there are arguments for legalization that are logical.

 

[DodgeFB]

What are your opinions on abortion and crime rate, especially if you are pro-life? This was a controversial topic discussed in the book Freakonomics and elsewhere as it suggests that legal abortion led to drastically reduced crime rates since many "unwanted" children were never born and didn't end up having poor lives that led to crime.

More from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_effect

Abortion is a topic I am not really decided on and never have been. Personally, I do not think I would be able to abort a child of my own, but there are arguments for legalization that are logical.

I think abortion used as birth control shows a disregard for life. So it should be a crime on it's own. Then if they mistreat the kid that is another crime. I am saying this and wish I had been aborted myself. So I guess I am conflicted on this subject.

But it makes sense that if ya kill enough people off you would have less crime. Of course you never know if the one you killed could have done something great either.

 

[obtuseobserver]

What are your opinions on abortion and crime rate, especially if you are pro-life? This was a controversial topic discussed in the book Freakonomics and elsewhere as it suggests that legal abortion led to drastically reduced crime rates since many "unwanted" children were never born and didn't end up having poor lives that led to crime.

More from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_effect

Abortion is a topic I am not really decided on and never have been. Personally, I do not think I would be able to abort a child of my own, but there are arguments for legalization that are logical.

let's assume aborting hundreds of thousands of babies that would have otherwise been born to poor black disadvantaged black mothers decreased the crime rate. assuming whatever rate crime was decreased does that argued margin justify the total numer of dead children in aborted in exchange?

 

[?thelfrith]

...assuming whatever rate crime was decreased does that argued margin justify the total numer of dead children in aborted in exchange?

If we banned abortion we'd merely increase mortality and morbidity problems as women opt for unsafe illegal services. Given that, the available gains (from potential crime effects to reductions in social expenditures) can be seen as a social gain.

 

[Iolo]

I know the argument from Freakonomics. Could be right. The key point, though, is that women's bodies belong to women, so men should shut up about this issue and leave it to the experts.

 

[?thelfrith]

I know the argument from Freakonomics. Could be right. The key point, though, is that women's bodies belong to women, so men should shut up about this issue and leave it to the experts.

The empirical evidence is rather mixed, with papers in favour and against the crime hypothesis. Its easier to find social expenditure effects

 

[obtuseobserver]

What are your opinions on abortion and crime rate, especially if you are pro-life? This was a controversial topic discussed in the book Freakonomics and elsewhere as it suggests that legal abortion led to drastically reduced crime rates since many "unwanted" children were never born and didn't end up having poor lives that led to crime.

More from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_effect

Abortion is a topic I am not really decided on and never have been. Personally, I do not think I would be able to abort a child of my own, but there are arguments for legalization that are logical.

Levitt fell victim to one of his own stated pitfalls... correlation is not causation.

Read John Lott's Freedomnomic for a rebuttal to Levitt

If we banned abortion we'd merely increase mortality and morbidity problems as women opt for unsafe illegal services. Given that, the available gains (from potential crime effects to reductions in social expenditures) can be seen as a social gain.

I didn't say word one about banning abortion.

I asked if the cost in human lives was worth the speculated benefit. Don't conflate the two.

I know the argument from Freakonomics. Could be right. The key point, though, is that women's bodies belong to women, so men should shut up about this issue and leave it to the experts.

the issue here is whether aborting children reduced crime rates not the legality of abortion... stay on topic

 

[?thelfrith]

Levitt fell victim to one of his own stated pitfalls... correlation is not causation.

Can you point me to one published analysis that rejects Levitt's results? The closest I've seen has been the paper by Foote and Goetz (2008, The Impact of Legalised Abortion on Crime: Comment, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 123, pp. 407-423). This suggests the original work isn't robust. However, Levitt came back with an impressive response. See Donohue and Levitt (2008, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Measurement Error, Legalized Abortion, and the Decline in Crime: A Response to Foote and Goetz, Vol 123, pp. 425-440):

Correcting our mistake does not alter the sign or statistical significance of our estimates, although it does reduce their magnitude. Using a more carefully constructed measure of abortion that better links birth cohorts to abortion exposure (by using abortion data by state of residence rather than of occurrence, by adjusting for cross-state mobility, and by more precisely estimating birth years from age of arrest data), we present new evidence that abortion legalization reduces crime through both a cohort-size and a selection effect.

So the crime hypothesis is still relevant for the abortion debate.

 

[myp]

Levitt fell victim to one of his own stated pitfalls... correlation is not causation.

Read John Lott's Freedomnomic for a rebuttal to Levitt

If I remember correctly, he had cited some studies that supported the argument and made it stronger than just correlation. I am not 100% sure though, I'll have to check it out as well as that Lott rebuttal.

 

[?thelfrith]

If I remember correctly, he had cited some studies that supported the argument and made it stronger than just correlation. I am not 100% sure though, I'll have to check it out as well as that Lott rebuttal.

I wouldn't trust Lott. Levitt certainly goes further than mere reference to correlation. His hypothesis testing has also been shown to be robust. There are, however, studies that fail to find the crime link. There's one using, for example, English and Welsh data. However, crime data for England is notoriously problematic for analysis over time

 

[Sky9]

This is a very controversial subject and matter. However, my personal opinion is that it should be the person's choice. I would like to think most people are capable of realizing that getting abortions aren't exactly the right thing. However, I know this not to be the case. Still, people have their own opinions and decisions in life to make, this should be another one of them being that it is generally a hard one. Still, there are people who would abuse the legality of having abortions and continue to raise problems saying it's inhumane. But that goes along with anything, alcohol is legal and people abuse it all the time, and that's just a small reference.

 

[obtuseobserver]

I wouldn't trust Lott. Levitt certainly goes further than mere reference to correlation. His hypothesis testing has also been shown to be robust. There are, however, studies that fail to find the crime link. There's one using, for example, English and Welsh data. However, crime data for England is notoriously problematic for analysis over time

why wouldn't you trust Lott?

From a review of Lott's book in re the abortion/crime deal.... summarizes Lott's argument

However, Lott identifies a couple key flaws. First, Lott documents that abortion was widespread in some states where it was legally restricted. Levitt fails to account for this. More importantly, Lott describes how the Roe v. Wade decision actually resulted in more out of wedlock births. This is because after Roe, single men felt less obligated to marry women they impregnated. Since children born out of wedlock are more likely to engage in criminal behavior, Lott argues that legalized abortion resulted in even more crime.

At a minimum it makes Levitt's conclusions suspect

 

[Abbott Presley]

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